Brooklyn: Casinos on Governors Island (”Down the drain,” editorial, Jan. 24)? If this pandemic has shown nothing else, it is the absolutely critical and life-saving concept of the public good. We must herald and safeguard the work that went to make Governors Island a haven for all New Yorkers.
I blame Mayor de Blasio for allowing any commercial interests on Governors Island in the first place. And I never liked the glamping because it paved the way for this possibility. Tax the super-wealthy, don’t set up stupid revenue-generating ventures that have been shown to not actually work and instead ruin our precious natural and unfettered spaces.
I used to go out to Governors Island before the refurbish, romping about in the liminal in-betweenness, glancing to Red Hook with old docks, pre-Fairway and hipness. I do not wish to glorify decay and yes, I was in NYC in 1980. I do remember.
Everyone wants to romanticize it, what birthed punk and hip hop — out of the concrete, NYC builds and rebuilds. Well, this is a crass place, built on money and exploitation since Europeans stepped foot on it. What else is new?
Casinos cannot be pulled back from. Sodom and Gomorrah. Heather D. Burack
Kearny, N.J.: Andrew Yang, who is running for NYC mayor, says he would use ice cream trucks to give out COVID-19 vaccinations! I think this is a great idea since my Mr. Softee truck already sells Viagra! Kevin Dale
Manhattan: I am a 69-year-old senior who is a patient at Weill Cornell Hospital. They are giving the vaccine to their patients 65 and older. My first injection was this past Saturday. I prepared myself for a nightmare experience. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised. The total time was 45 minutes and that included waiting 30 minutes after the injection. Thank you to all the staff for making my experience pleasant. I hope it will be the same in three weeks when I get my second one. Carole Lund
Brooklyn: As we approach tax season, let us remember our new rallying call: taxation without vaccination! Ed Greenspan
Robbinsville, N.J.: Many cancer survivors with weakened immune systems have spent the past year burdened by the constant worry about the coronavirus. With vaccinations in high demand and short supply, I write to urge our public health experts and decision-makers to consider the overlooked population of cancer survivors when making critical decisions about priority groups. Cancer patients in active treatment are being considered for priority vaccination in many parts of the country but what about survivors? The health of many survivors remains incredibly fragile long after treatment ends. Among survivors of childhood cancers, for example, 95% suffer long-term side effects of their disease or treatment. These late effects are often chronic, sometimes life-threatening and can include cardiac problems and lung damage, which puts survivors at high risk if they contract COVID-19. Public health recommendations must prioritize safeguarding the most vulnerable. Cancer survivors should be high on that list. Randi Levine
Kinnelon, N.J.: My father-in-law, Rocco Amarena, died last Friday. He read your paper for 80 years, since the age of 18 when he first came to America from Italy. He said he learned how to read and write through the use of the Daily News. He was a World War II vet and damn proud of being an American. A week ago, he was reading The News with his one poor eye with a magnifying glass. Jeff Overton
Hempstead, L.I.: To the Voicers: An episode of “All in the Family” demonstrates how far the Daily News has drifted to the left since 1972. In the episode “The Elevator Story,” Archie Bunker is trapped in an elevator with several people. One of them, a lawyer from Larchmont, asks, “Does anyone have a newspaper?” and Archie replies, “I got the Daily News,” to which the lawyer replies, “It figures.” Leslie Feldman
Yonkers: N’ere a day goes by that you don’t see on the news or read in the paper about someone getting thrown from a subway platform onto the tracks or someone getting hit over the head with a cinder block, or someone getting punched in the face for no reason, etc. The common denominator of the miscreants is usually mental illness. As you walk the streets of NYC, the homeless proliferate and often that misfortune is accompanied by mental disease. What is being done for these unfortunates? Besides rhetoric, are city officials doing anything to keep the general public safe from the delusions infecting the mentally ill? I’m not recommending opening a Blackwell’s Island but I thought the mayor’s wife was charged with humanely finding a solution to this ubiquitous problem. It had better happen sooner than later because it’s once again getting dangerous out there. Thomas J. Mullen
Manhattan: Re: (“Most N.Y.ers want new bike & bus lanes — poll,” Jan. 26): There’s a silver lining for New Yorkers in this terrible pandemic: streets reimagined and reinvigorated for the people, not for cars. And we like it that way. Every driver who switches to bikes or buses lowers the climate-destroying greenhouse gas emissions that spew from gas-powered cars. Less traffic means a healthier, livelier city, one that we can enjoy along with the tourists who will return in droves as New York recovers. Matthew Schneck
Hauppauge, L.I.: Non-gender identification? I wonder how that idiot Nancy Pelosi says the Lord’s Prayer. Maureen Farrell
Park Ridge, N.J.: Voicer Lester Simon summarizes Donald Trump’s failures in office and wishes Joe Biden well with the mess he has inherited. While Biden has never given me the impression that he is qualified to lead this country and his age is against him, I am willing to give him a chance to try to bring this country back together. The hatred in this country for the last four years as seen in and by the news media, on op-ed pages in newspapers throughout the country and by Democrats has led to a second impeachment. I won’t defend Trump for the things he has said. His words have hurt him and cost him a second term and will haunt him for the rest of his life. But it is time to look past Trump and get this country back on the right track. My question is when do the failures of the presidency become his? Steve Ostlund
Stanfordville, N.Y.: I can totally understand why the Republicans want to forego a second impeachment trial of Trump. After all, only five people died as a result of Jan. 6. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to COVID deaths. A number of the actual insurrectionists are being prosecuted. That should be good enough. Is it so important that the instigator of the insurrection, the one man most responsible for the riot at the Capitol who intended to overturn the democratically elected successor, be punished? He’s already left office. Do the senators who fled in fear of their lives really need to show the American public that even a past president should bear the consequences of orchestrating an attack against our very democracy? I know Trump hasn’t apologized, admitted his lies or even acknowledged the part he played. The past is the past, isn’t it? Marcie L. Waterman
Hales Corners, Wis.: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and a group of his GOP colleagues have criticized President Joe Biden for signing an executive order to have the U.S. rejoin the Paris climate agreement. Notably, all national commitments in the Paris accord are voluntary, and individual nations determine the ambition and design of their own climate plans. The pandemic has taught us the importance of hedging against catastrophic risk. Certainly, this is consistent with conservative values. President Biden should be congratulated for embracing U.S. leadership on this crucial issue. Terry Hansen
Manhattan: I saw on my computer today that Jane Fonda is going to receive the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award. Does that include when she was sitting on a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun with her boyfriends (Charlies)? Audie Murphy must be turning over in his grave like a lot of veterans. Dennis Dunleavy